Book Review: My Dear Boy

My Dear Boy

Gay Love Letters Through the Centuries

Editor:                            Rictor Norton

Publisher:                      Leyland Publications

Type:                              Soft Cover

Pages:                             278

Genre:                            non-fiction

Published:                     1998

ISBN:                             9780943595719

 This book is well written and well produced. It has a few black and white photos, paintings and drawings within. It should be noted that there is a little nudity, but this is very tasteful and artistic.

 This book is exactly what it says on the cover, it presents love letters between male loves thorough history. It is amazing that so many gay love letters have survived.

 The introduction makes a very excellent point that while some have tried to claim that homosexuality s a modern invention. That claim is as ridiculous as claiming there were no alcoholics before Magnus Huss "discovered" alcoholism in 1852.

 Each entry starts out describing the writer and recipient of the letters and then often shows some written correspondence back and forth between them.

 We start off reading of Alexander the Great and his lovers, the we move on to Marcus Aurelius who funnily enough equated his desire for his male lover with being thirsty after a great fever. After that we move to ancient China and a love story that might just bring a tear to the eye.
 I will also mention that some of there solve letters come from saints, monks and clerics.

 The stories come from all over the world, Germany, Portugal, China, Rome, Japan, Italy, Brittan, France, America among other locations. 

 Some of the authors i knew while others were a mystery to me. Some more famous names included; Hans Christian Anderson, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, King Ludwing II, Pior, Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo, King James, Alexander Hamilton, Lord Byron, William Burroughs, TS Elliot, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, Countee Cullen, TE Lawrence and Allen Ginsberg.

 This is a fascinating and very important work. Australians LGBTQ community is currently going through a hate campaign enabled by the right wing government, in it every Australian will get to vote on if LGBTQ people should have equal marriage rights. During this horrible "debate" i have hear much vilification and many threats against LGBTQ individuals, family's and youth. But the worst was probably one woman. She was arguing that LOVE was between a man and a woman, not marriage, no she was adamant that only a man and a woman could love. For more on what kind of people are voting on our rights read the #TheyGettoVote hashtag on Twitter.

 Anyway i highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in history, or LGBTQ issues. If fact if your going to comment publicly on LGBTQ issues you have a responsibility to educate your self on those issues. You should read this book. This book should be in every high school, perhaps an edited version with some pictures removed if necessary, but it needs to be there.

Terrorism in Australia

Terrorism in Australia

Melbourne CBD 

 In a recent terror attack in Australian city of Melbourne, 37 people were injured and 5 people tragically died. Pauline Hanson happened to be having one of her numerous media events at the time. You can see an advisor whispers in her ear and she looks stunned for a second and then turns and says smugly (note the look on her face!);

"Iv just been told there's a terorrister (sic) attack that's just happened in Melbourne."
"People don't look right! That their not going to assumeulate (sic) into our society, Have a different ideology, different beliefs, don't probide (sic) by our laws, our culture, our way of life, don't let them in!
Make this country safe for our future generations!"
She went on to falsely claim that 
"all terrorist attacks in this country have been by Muslims!"

 It should be noted that this was another homophobic terror attack, with the man having stabbed his gay brother and vowing 'I’m going to kill all gays and poofters and lesbians'.
Now if we ignore her targeting Muslims and pretend she had directed her comments against the homophobia of the terrorist we can actually see she would have been justified in making them. So lets fix that for her to make her comments relevant and factual, lets direct them at the proper targets.

'Homophobes are not going to assimilate into our society. Homophobes have a different ideology, different beliefs, they don't abide by our laws, our culture, and our way of life. Homophobia should not be tolerated! We need to make this country safe for our future generations.'

 Of course she will never admit her 'mistake', it doesn't further her political career to actually fight the causes of terror. She still has not apologised for trying to straight-wash the homophobic Orlando attack and she i cant find anywhere where she has corrected her misinformation about the Melbourne attack, she certainly hasn't changed her homophobic policies.

 Terror Organisation:

 Earlier in February the Q-society held a fund raising event. I hadn't previously heard of the Q-society but its apparently a right wing group that opposes freedom of religion and the Australian constitution. Larry Pickering (who may be trying to win Australia's most disgusting cartoonist award from Bill Leak) attended the event where he said;

 "I can't stand Muslims…[but] they are not all bad, they do chuck pillow-biters off buildings." 

 For those who don't know "pillow-biters" is a derogatory term for homosexuals, and Larry here is referring to the terrorist group ISIL policy of murdering gay men by throwing them off tall buildings. Obviously this support of terrorism should have been immediately condemned he should have been booed off the stage and escorted out of the building to a waiting police car, where he could receive a psychiatric evaluation before his trial on charges of hate crimes, advocating violence and supporting terrorism. But that didn't happen. instead we had right -wing, homophobic, science denying, anti-constitutional, pro-child bullying Cory Bernardi attended the event and thus provided his own support for this group. But he wasn't alone, George Christensen who shares many of Cory's reprehensible views and actually advocates for the death penalty for convicted terrorists. 
 None of us are layers specialising in anti-terrorism legislation, but it seems clear to us that praising the terrorism of terrorists is an act of terrorism as it creates a serious risk to the health and safety of the public. As this event was a fundraiser and this organisation appears to be a terrorist organisation all those in attendance have also funded terrorism which is a crime. The Q-society appears to be eligible for categorisation as a terrorist organisation as it seems to meet the criteria:

• is engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act
  or
• advocates the doing of a terrorist act.

• counsels, promotes, encourages or urges the doing of a terrorist act
• gives instruction on the doing of a terrorist act
• directly praises the doing of a terrorist act, where there is a substantial risk that this praise might lead someone to engage in a terrorist act. 

 The enforcement of our anti-terrorism legislation seems unlikely as the perpetrators were white, non-Muslims, the proposed victims were gay men, also the categorisation as a terrorist organisation is at the discretion of the attorney general.
 But you can do something, if you remember Malcolm Trumble promised to protect us from homophobia and hate speech, lets at least ask him to do the bare minimum and condemn George Christensen for attending the Q Society's fundraiser!

One Nations* parade of clowns:

One nation* is a minor political party that relies on fear and misinformation to spread homophobia and racism. You will remember their candidates have shown and generally weird and often disgusting alternate views on reality. And I'm not just referencing the standard climate denial, anti-science, homophobic, anti-constitutional, racist, sexist, anti-worker, sexist, rubbish. One i missed was the outrageous alternate reality of Peter Rogers who claimed that poor Syrian refuge child on the beach was faked. Link to story here, but be warned it has that graphic photo, though it is slightly blurred.  

 So after all the other inappropriate candidates One Nation* gives us; Michelle Meyers, not to be confused with Michael Myers, who come to think of it might make a better candidate. Michelle Meyers claims to believe such insane things as "abortions create cannibals', 'gays are indoctrinating children, 'gays are confused', 'trans people are broken'. and that 'two dead Harvard graduated Norwegian homosexuals (who are also apparently somehow Nazi's) are using a well known mind control to make marriage equality and holographic (?) families more acceptable'.

 While this should alarm everyone, what is possibly more distressing is that the government is giving her its preferences!
 I am not going to comment on this further except to say that she is obviously unfit for government and i hope she receives the psychiatric help or education she evidently needs.

  
 *excepts apply. 
 

 

The Liberals need to be a bit more liberal.

 Take a few steps to the left Malcolm.

 Just a quick bit of back ground. Tony Abbot outraged Australians with his far right opinions and his policy attacks on the poor, sick, refugees, and gays. He seemed to be set on breaking every one of his election promises. He made more and more ridiculous comments and was eventually ousted by Malcolm Turnbull. 

 Turnbull was believed by many to be more middle ground in his views, for instance he favored a marriage equality vote in Parliament rather than a costly and decisive plebiscite.
But when Malcom Turnbulll got in he continued on with Abbot like policy, he now wanted a plebiscite, he attacked medicare and leading up to the election he kowtowed to the radical right wing nuts in their attacks on children. 

 He ignored the fact gays were the victims when first commenting on Orlando. He later promised to have zero tolerance for homophobia but example after example saw him not speaking out against it. 
 It surfaced a few days before the election that the government was going to give taxpayers money to anti-gay hate groups so they could argue against equality, in the lead up to a plebiscite.

 So the election doesn't look good for the Turnbull government with the two major party's pretty much neck and neck, there has been a large swing against Turnbull's government but neither party look likely to have the numbers to form a majority government.

 Cory Bernardi is a far right wing homophobe, conspiracy theorist and member of Turnbull's government. Cory has come out calling on Turnbull, if he manages to form government, to ignore the voter backlash and stall the plebiscite. He went on to claim that equality, is just a 'trendy, fringe issue'. I totally disagree, i  think equal rights, preventing youth suicide, upholding our constitution,  and protecting children from bullying is an extremely important issue. 

 He seemed to be implying that the swing against Turnbull was because the Turnbull government wasn't far right enough... I maybe could understand this argument if the swing had been to further right partys, like the dreaded Fred Niles abomination party, or Family First* (*conditions apply) but it wasn't, the swing was towards Labor which is slightly left of Turnbull's party and is in favor of a parliamentary vote on equality and is against the homophobic plebiscite.

 Now Cory is one of those radical right wingers that try to turn the tables on their victims, you know the type, claiming that straight people would be personally harmed if gays had equal rights. I think this outburst from him is just along similar lines, the people showed in the election that they are against the costly, homophobic and non-binding plebiscite, that they are for marriage equality. 

 But Cory cant have that, so he tries to flip the table and claim that the voters moving to a (slightly) more left party is evidence that the voters want a more right wing government, i know it makes no sense but little he has said ever does.

 Personally i feel that both political partys in Australia need to shuffle to the left a bit. 
 When people like Cory Bernardi, and George Christensen are welcome in your party (Coalition) you know your teetering on the edge of the far right and need to run left a ways.
 Labor looks set to form a minority government but I do hope that Turnbull and his Coalition takes the election result as clear confirmation that we demand truth in politics and we demand equality. We need a leader that will stand up to homophobic insanity, we want our equal rights.

Update:

 It looks like a small percentage of this swing against Turnbull did go right wing, with Pauline Hansons racist One Nation getting a seat. 
 One could argue that this might still be in support of the LGBT community as much of Australia's news media in Australia, misrepresented the Orlando hate crime as a terror attack and failed to disclose its homophobic nature. 
 I can imagine some low information voters voting for the Islamophobic Hanson in misguided support of gay people, without realising how backwards and misinformed her views truly are.

Sources:

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDefault-20499.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/04/marriage-equality-corey-bernardi-says-plebiscite-question-a-fifth-order-issue

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/03/marriage-equality-cory-bernardi-says-no-need-to-hurry-on-plebiscite

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-malcolm-turnbulls-future-is-up-for-debate-20160704-gpxuqe.html

 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/17142

The plebacite question

The Plebiscite

So i am not going to go over why its such a bad idea in much detail, i will just leave some points here:

* Marriage laws changed before,by this government, without a 
   plebiscite.
* The bigots will come out of the woodwork with their damaging 
   hate speech and vilification.
* It is expensive (525 Million +).
* It is unnecessary.
* It is non-binding.
* The bigots have already said they wont abide by its decision 
   if it goes against their bigoted views.
* Its stalling as it will only happen if the Lib/Nats are re-elected 
   (IE: when hell freezes over). 
* The current laws are unconstitutional and should be changed 
    as a matter of law.
 * The hate groups often pose as Christians and their rhetoric 
    will further tarnish the reputation of Christianity and through 
    association other religions.

Anyway, what i actually want to talk about is if we had to have this ridiculous plebiscite, what should the question be? 

1. Should Australia have marriage equality?

    This is probably a little too simple.

2. Should all non-related Australians of legal age and with 
   full consent be allowed to marry?

   This is probably a little too wordy.

3. Does Australia need a plebiscite to change the marriage 
    laws? 

    An interesting one, because if the answer is yes, then we 
    would rescind the Lib/Nats changes to the marriage act and 
    i believe that would technically allow marriage equality. If the 
   answer is no, then marriage equality could be achieved in 
   parliament.

4. Should marriage laws be in line with the Australian 
    constitution?

    I believe a yes vote would force the laws to be changed to 
    make them constitutional, allowing marriage equality.

5. Should Australia remain a democracy and resist 
    fundamentalist religious fanatics trying to implement 
    religious laws? (IE: sharia law, Mosaic law).

    A yes vote would be for marriage equality.

6. Should all Australians have equal rights?

    Personally, i think this is probably the fairest and simplest.

 

 
 So if we have to have this plebiscite, what should the question be?



  

A chance to support equality

A chance at equality

 

Encourage by Ireland referendum on 1/06/2015 Bill Shorten (Labor leader) introduced a bill into parliament that would allow marriage equality in Australia. He made a speech which was quite inspiring and the bill was seconded by Tanya Plibersek (Labor) after none of the LIB/Nat coalition would sign it despite calling for a bipartisan approach.

Bipartisanship is a political situation, especially in the context of a two-party system, in which opposing political parties find common ground through compromise.

Obviously there can be no compromise when it comes to equal rights, and calls for bipartisanship in this instance must mean that parties would not oppose equality for the sake of opposing the other political party. 

In a snub against every gay person and supporter of equal rights, the Lib/National seats in the parliamentary chamber were mostly empty during the bills introduction.

Equality should be the priority!

It should be noted that the Lib/Nats removed equality from the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), invalidating Australians marriages, saying that it would be addressed in federal parliament.
It should also be noted that before the election the Lib/Nats were saying that a free vote would occur on marriage equality.

 One wonders; Where is the bipartisanship? Where is the respect? The government still has time to do the right thing and represent Australia and change the laws back to how they were before 2004.

A poll conducted on behalf of the Liberal party found that 72% of Australians are not bigoted and support equality. Its well past time, lets get this thing done so we can move on to other issues. Lets stop wasting time, lets stop playing politics with peoples lives. There are no valid arguments against equality, so lets just do it.

Marriage Equality Ireland

Ireland says yes to equality

Ireland had a non-compulsory referendum on Marriage equality on the 23/05/2015. The votes were counted and Ireland voted for equality. They are the first nation to grant equal marriage rights through a referendum.

 The vote (at this time) was 62.07% for equality and 37.93% for continued bigotry. It should be noted that in Australia we do not require a referendum.

I take this opportunity to thank all those who fought for this decision, i thank the people of Ireland for there stance one equal civil rights.

 Here in Australia it gives us hope, that one day those born gay may have the same rights as those born straight. I might just quash some silly points bigots make here to get them out of the way;

• If you don't want gay people to have equal rights you are a bigot (A person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. A person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group) and a homophobe (A person who hates or is afraid of homosexuals or treats them badly).
• Your religion is not a valid reason to take another persons civil rights away, your religion should govern how you behave. You would think it unfair if you were denied civil rights because someones other religion was against you for some reason.
• In the Australian constitution it expressly forbids laws made on the basis of religion. The current laws are unconstitutional.
• Most gods and goddesses throughout time have actually accepted homosexuality as an expression of natural human sexuality. At the moment in Australia one religions influence over our laws has overridden the ability of other religions to perform their own sacred marriages.
• Marriage has not been static through history. The word and the notion is not owned by, or particular to any one religion. In fact in Australia the term Marriage is a legal definition. In Australia the term and meaning of Marriage was changed as recently as 2004 when the Howard government redefined it. In 2013 the Abbot government further redefined Marriage to disallow Marriage equality in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory).
• Homosexuality is natural, it has been with us since time begun. There has not been any animal studied (that has male/female genders) that does not naturally exhibit homosexuality. 
•  If Marriage is only about procreation for you, you would be spending an equal amount of time and energy opposing the marriages of; infertile couples (perhaps mandatory fertility checks before marriage), older couples, couples with no inclination to have children, etc. Is it should also be noted the Australian law does not require married couples to be fertile.Also that view (and any other) would be for you and should define your marriage, not everyone else's.

• The change to equality will not effect you in any meaningful way, unless you choose to come out, date, meet the person of your dreams, fall in love and chooses to get married.
• Being homosexual was not a choice for me, so stop saying it was. If you personally have equal attraction for both genders and choose only to act upon those for the opposite sex, that makes you bisexual not heterosexual.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  If you are against Marriage equality for some reason and want to be a better person by letting go of the irrational hate, there is a world of information at your fingertips. In this day and age ignorance of the facts is really no excuse. I would start my journey to inner peace at the Australian Marriage Equality.Org website. They will be much kinder to your intolerance than i have been above.

  
  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  So now Ireland is more socially advanced and has more common sense than Australia...